This document contains all the elaborated lecture slides plus my own written notes and explanations from the course Lecture Notes Reality Contested: Visual Arts Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Lecture 1 From Neoclassicism to Romanticism
1789-1914 (the long 19th century)
Painting visual reality (‘mimesis’) comes under pressure, due to the rise of a new medium:
photography. It causes the development of painting reality to non-reality (abstract). Because why
painting reality if you can make a photograph of it?
Artists/Painters had to find another way to express themselves, because they feel
photography is a concurrent of the mimesis in painting.
Mimesis = the act of representing or imitating reality in art.
Monochrome = using only black, white and grey color, or using only one color.
Daguerreotype (first photography) is a unique image on a silvered copper plate invented by Louis
Daguerre.
Modern art where to begin?
1) Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
This painting was exhibited in 1865 on the now famous Salon des Refuses. It is revolutionary for
several reasons: not only its provocative subject matter but also the style of painting, the lack of
central point perspective, the stressing of flatness. It is erotic and the beginning of impressionism
because Manet paints according to his own rules.
2) Courbet, L’Atelier de peintre
Avant-garde (Courbet) verus Juste milieu (Delaroche)
Avant-garde = revolutionary artists, experimental, radical or unorthodox, innovatory
Juste milieu = artistic form that try to finds a middle ground between the traditional and the modern;
the happy mean; a little bit of this, that etc.; nothing really adventurous. It is no avant-garde, but
conservative in a sense. It changes as new styles emerge.
3) Is Romanticism the beginning of Modern art? (1810) Why?
- Another attitude, changing sentiments and another view on admitting feelings, emotions, the
imagination. (Goya, El Coloso)
- Less academic rules -> Romantics neglected the Academic rules
- Growing awareness of what it is to become an original artist
What happened before Romanticism? Where did Romanticism react upon?
Neoclassicism (1765-1810)
Jacques-Louis David painted in service of the state (king Louis XVI, last king of France and symbol of
the Ancien Régime) and of the French Revolution between 1789-1799 and rich aristocrats.
Ancien Régime = political and social system in France before the Frenc Revolution of 1789
David, Oath of the Horatii
- This painting marks the classical architecture as background with its Doric columns.
- It also marks the clair-obscure (chiaroscuro) = ‘light dark’ ; clear tonal contrast which are
often used to suggest the volume and modeling of the subjects depicted.
- It has a monumental scale; ‘Grande machine de Salon’
- It has a simple, well-organized composition (Neoclassical)
, - It has contrasts, masculinity, virginity, softness and emotions
- Atrium = open-roofed entrance hall or central court in ancient Roman house (Roman
architecture)
This history painting (a specific genre in art history) is called an Exemplum Virtutis: it gave the French
people a moral lesson -> virtue and patriotism wrapped in a noble, Roman classic stoicism. It is very
detailed – no coloristic sfumato; almost photographic, contours are often visible, very physical and
intense sphere.
Sfumato = the ‘smoky’ quality which blurs contours so that figures emerge from a dark background
by means of gradual tonal modulations without only harsh outlines.
J.J. Winckelmann was a quiet grandeur, had a noble simplicity and silent magnitude.
Stylistic aspects of Neoclassicism
• Clear composition: sharp lines, contours, forms
• Clear and unmixed (ongemengd) colours
• From a relatively small distance a more or less invisible brushstroke
• Horizontals, verticals and diagonals in the composition of the painting
• Simple postures, sober ornamentation
• Subject matter: often classical past
• Propaganda for moral elevation/moral lessons – Exemplum Virtutis
Enlightenment -> Rationality -> Neoclassicism
Revolution time : David, Oath of the Tennis Court
Changes were takin place in politics and society, and David changed from political viewpoint; he
engaged with the French Revolution going on in Paris.
Declaration of the Human Rights (1789)
David, Death of Marat
Marat was a martyr (person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs) of the French
Revolution, he was a friend of David. The painting has aspects from ‘Edle Einfalt, Stille Grösse from
Winckelmann’. Marat was killed by Charlotte Corday.
The painting fits in a iconographical tradition of the dead Christ = traditional/conventional images or
symbols associated with a subject and especially a religious and legendary subject: the imagery
within the artwork.
Several years later Napoleon Bonaparte became first Consul (1799) and later Emperor of France
(1804)
Romanticism: Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonapart Visiting the Plague House at Jaffa
- Chaos, disorder, strong emotions versus patriotism, austerity
- Sfumato
- Orientalism = style, artefacts, or traits characteristic of the peoples and cultures of Asia. The
representation of Asia in a stereotyped way that is regarded as embodying a colonialist
attitude.
Romanticism causes an evaluation of the question: What in fact, is art? And what is it about?
- Emotion and intuition on a same level with ratio/thinking
- Significance of the individual and the subjective
- Imagination
- Seeing nature honestly
, - Famous artists: John Constable, William Turner in England; Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip
Otto Runge in Germany; Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault in France, also Antoine-
Jean Gros; Francisco de Goya in Spain
Antoine-Jean Gros had a fascinating resemblance with the famous etching of Rembrandt (Christ
Healing the Sick, where Napoleon is depicted as a Christ figure, as a healing figure). Composition
probably partly taken over from David’s ‘Oath’.
Eugène Delacroix, Autoportrait/Self-portrait
Eugène Delacroix, Dante and Virgil/The Barque of Dante
Damned people going to hell
John Constable, The Haywain
Delacroix was in 1824 very much impressed by Constable, while seeing a show in Paris: ‘truth to
nature’ : Romantic/Realistic vision on the English landscape
Eugène Delacroix, Le 28 Juillet. La Liberté guidant le peuple
The ‘Marianne’ figure with the ‘Tricoloure’ as emblem of the Revolution, she is an allegory of the
three revolutionary paradigms. This is an allegorical painting about the idea of liberty, equality and
fraternity. Allegorical = the description of a subject in the guise of another subject.
It has a mix of realistic elements with romantic ideas
Sfumato
Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa / Le Radeau de la Méduse
Pyramidical composition = an artist places objects and figures within the outline of an imaginary
triangle or pyramid on the picture plane. (Neoclassical method)
Chaso, disorder, ill/sick people, death, corpses, despair, little bit of hope, tragedy, politically
incorrect.
Sfumato
This subject matter is very appropriate for a Romantic painter.
The painting has a mix of realistic elements with a Romantic flavor, because there is hope for a better
future.
Stylistic aspects of Romanticism
• Stronger accent on colours, more use of mixed colours
• Brushstroke is more lose and often very visible
• More dynamics in the painting, more diagonals
• Lose composition (kind of chaotic, at first sight)
• Subject matter: Literature (Middle Ages), Christian motivs, Orientalism, Nature phenomena
(stormy weather), Landscape
• Neoclassicism Romanticism
• Ratio (18th century is Age of • Feeling/emotion (early 19th century)
Enlightenment) • More feeling for freedom
• Academic rules • More painterly in composition
• Clear composition • Diffuse kind of painting
• Accent on lineature • Emotional thruth accordin to the artist,
• Kind of Ideal Beauty mixed with realist elements
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